By the end of his final budget (FY 2017), his deficits were $6.690 trillion. Obama took office during the Great Recession. He immediately needed to spend billions to stop it. He convinced Congress to add the $787 billion economic stimulus package to Bush’s FY 2009 budget. This added $253 billion to the FY 2009 budget. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act added another $534 billion over the rest of Obama’s terms.

In 2010, the Obama tax cut added $858 billion to the debt in its first two years. Obama increased defense spending, adding as much as $800 billion a year. Federal income decreased due to lower tax receipts from the 2008 financial crisis.

Both Presidents Bush and Obama suffered from higher mandatory spending than their predecessors did. Social Security and Medicare benefits were eating up more of the budget.

That's because health care costs were rising as the American population aged. In 2010, Obama launched the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It sought to reduce health care spending. This reduction would lower the debt by $143 billion by 2020. For more, see National Debt Under Obama.

President George W. BushPresident Bush is next, racking up $3.293 trillion over two terms. He responded to the 9/11 attacks with the War on Terror. That raised military spending to $600 billion a year. The Bush tax cuts, also known as EGTRRA and JGTRRA, cut taxes to address the 2001 recession. Unfortunately, the cuts did not sunset when the recession was over. That worsened the housing boom and depleted revenues during the 2008 recession. He attacked the 2008 financial crisis with the $700 billion bailout. Congress added the bailout to the mandatory budget. There it became the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

President Ronald ReaganPresident Reagan added $1.412 trillion in deficits, nearly doubling the debt. He fought the 1982 recession by cutting the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent and the corporate rate from 48 percent to 34 percent. Reagan also increased government spending by 2.5 percent a year. That included a 35 percent increase in the defense budget and an expansion of Medicare.

President George H.W. BushPresident George H.W. Bush created a $1.03 trillion deficit in one term. He responded to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait with Desert Storm. He oversaw the $125 billion bailout that ended the 1989 Savings and Loan crisis. The 1991 recession cut into tax revenue.

Budget Deficits by Fiscal Year Although most other presidents ran deficits, none came close to these four. Part of that is because the U.S. economy, as measured by GDP, was so much smaller for other presidents. For example, in 1981 GDP was only $3 trillion, five times smaller than the $15 trillion GDP in 2012.

The table below shows each president's annual budget deficits since Woodrow Wilson. For more, see Deficit by Year and Debt by Year.

President Donald Trump: Total Projected = $440 billion. A decrease from Obama's last budget.

Republicans don't care about the deficit when there is a Republican president. This is a law of physics at this point, proven over and over.

You simply have to understand The Two Santa Claus Theory.

Jude Wanniski, a non-economist, is credited with the confabulation known as "Supply-side Economics." This is for real. I studied this in 300 level economics courses. Wanniski's idea was that their ideology is wildly unpopular and they would never be able to sell it, including the elimination of Social Security. Therefore they had to have their own "Santa Claus," that being tax cuts with the idea that cutting taxes raises tax revenues.

That's nothing new. It was called horse and sparrow in the 19th Century with the idea that you over feed the horse and so the sparrows get to feed on the droppings.

Anyway what they really want to do is spend like drunken sailors when they are in office and then squeal like a stuck pig about debt when Democrats win, thus forcing Democrats to kill their Santa Claus, Social Security.